Contents

Attestations

The only contemporaneous attestation of Wepwawetemsaf's reign is a limestonestele "of exceptionally crude quality"[5] discovered in Abydos and now in the British Museum (EA 969).[7][8] The stele shows the king before the god "Wepwawet, lord of Abydos" and is generally described as of poor worksmanship.[4] The stela was produced by a workshop operating in Abydos. Other stelae produced by this workshop belong to king Rahotep and king Pantjeny. The egyptologist Marcel Marée therefore concludes that these three kings reigned quite close in time. He believes that the stela of Pantjeny was made by a different artist, while the stelae of Rahotep and Wepwawetemsaf were carved by the same man. He argues that Wepwawetemsaf reigned directly after king Rahotep. He does not assign single kings to specific dynasties, but comes to the conclusion that these kings belong to the late 16th or very early 17th Dynasty,[3]

Another possible attestation of this king is a graffito discovered in tomb no. 2 at Beni Hasan belonging to the 12th DynastynomarchAmenemhat and located about 250 km north of Abydos, in Middle Egypt. The graffito has been tentatively read by Beckerath as "Sekhemreneferkhau" but this remains uncertain as the original is now lost.[4][5][9]

Dynasty

In his study of the second intermediate period, Kim Ryholt elaborates on the idea originally proposed by Detlef Franke that following the collapse of the 13th Dynasty with the conquest of Memphis by the Hyksos, an independent kingdom centered on Abydos arose in Middle Egypt.[11] The Abydos Dynasty thus designates a group of local kinglets reigning for a short time in central Egypt. Ryholt notes that Wepwawetemsaf is only attested in central Egypt and that his name comprises the theophoric reference to the Abydene god Wepwawet. Thus he concludes that Wepwawetemsaf most likely ruled from Abydos and belongs to the Abydos Dynasty.[5] This conclusion is shared by Darrell Baker but not by Beckerath, who places Wepwawetemsaf in the late 13th Dynasty.[6]

The egyptologist Marcel Marée also rejects Ryholt's hypothesis and instead holds that Wepwawetemsaf is a king of the late 16th Dynasty. Indeed, Marée notes that the workshop which produced Wepwawetemsaf's stele is also responsible for the production of the stelae of Pantjeny and Rahotep, the latter most often assigned to the early 17th Dynasty. Marée therefore concludes that Rahotep, Pantjeny and Wepwawetemsaf reigned quite close in time. This reasoning also precludes the existence of an Abydos Dynasty c. 1650 BC.[3]